Platform

Can you boil the essence of your novel or non-fiction book idea into twenty-five words or less?

This is one of the keys to creating a marketing hook that makes your idea sellable in today’s crowded market.

You have less than a minute to make that hook work. But it can take hours to craft that pitch.

It is also called creating the “elevator pitch” or the “Hollywood pitch.” The goal is get the marketing department to exclaim, “We can sell that without any problem!” And ultimately to get a consumer to say, “I want that” or “I need that” or “I know someone who should have that.”

When teaching this I’ll have the writer go to the front of the class and present their elevator pitch. The writer can say the genre (fiction or non-fiction genre) and the title. Then present the pitch in 25 words or less.

Sometimes the entire class will ooh and ahh. In that moment, we all learn what an effective pitch sounds like.

Then I ask,”What is the book about?” If the class cannot answer, then the pitch has a problem.

I’m seldom at a loss for words (though often at a loss for something of value to say), but the question took me aback for a moment. I was on an agents-and-editors panel at a writers’ conference within a few months of becoming an agent. I’d done this sort of …

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